CHAPTER XX
[A FRIEND IN NEED]
Sophia's knees shook under her, her flesh shuddered in revolt, but she held her ground until Hawkesworth's footsteps and the murmur of his companions' jeering voices sank and died in the distance. Then, with eyes averted from the bed, she crept to the head of the stairs and descended, her skirts gathered jealously about her. She reached the kitchen. Here, in the twilight that veiled the shrouded cradle, and mercifully hid worse things, she listened awhile; peering with scared eyes into the corners, and prepared to flee at the least alarm. Satisfied at last that those she feared had really withdrawn, she passed out into the open, and under the night sky, with the fresh breeze cooling her fevered face, she drank in with ecstasy a first deep breath of relief. Oh, the pureness of that draught! Oh, the freedom and the immensity of the vault above her--after that charnel-house!
She felt sure that the men had retired the way they had come, and after a moment's hesitation she turned in the other direction, and venturing into the moonlight, took the road that Betty had taken. Now she paused to listen, now on some alarm effaced herself in the shadow cast by a tree. By-and-by, when she had left the plague-stricken house two or three hundred paces behind her, her ear caught the pleasant ripple of water. Her throat was parched, and she stopped, and traced the sound to a spring that, bubbling from a rock, filled a mossy caldron sunk in the earth, then ran to waste in a tiny rill beside the road. The hint was enough; in a second she had dragged off her outer garment, a green riding-coat, and shuddering, flung it from her; in another she had thrown off her shoes and loosened her hair. A moment she listened; then, having assured herself that she was not pursued, she plunged head and hair and hands in the fountain, let the cool water run over her fevered arms and neck, revelled in the purifying touch that promised to remove from her the loathsome infection of the house. She was a woman, she had not only death, but disfigurement to fear. One of the happy few who, under the early Georges, when even inoculation was in its infancy, had escaped the disease, she clung to her immunity with a nervous dread.
When she had done all she could, she rose to her feet and knotted up her hair. She had Betty on her mind; she must follow the girl. But midnight was some time past, the moon was declining, and her strength, sapped by the intense excitement under which she had laboured, was nearly spent. The chances that she would alight on Betty were slight, while it was certain that the girl would eventually return, or would send to the place where they had parted company. Sophia determined to remain where she was; and with the music of the rill for company, and a large stone that stood beside it for a seat, hard but dry, the worst discomfort which she had to fear was cold; and this, in her fervent gratitude for rescue from greater perils, she bore without complaint.
The solemnity of the night, as it wore slowly to morning, the depth of silence--as of death--that preceded the dawn, the stir of thanksgiving that greeted the birth of another day, these working on a nature stirred by strange experiences and now subject to a strange solitude, awoke in her thoughts deeper than ordinary. She saw in Betty's recklessness the mirror of her own; she shuddered at Hawkesworth, disclosed to her in his true colours; and considered Sir Hervey's patience with new wonder. Near neighbour to death, she viewed life as a thing detached and whole; with its end as well as its beginning. And she formed resolutions, humble at the least.
By-and-by she had to rise and be walking to keep herself warm; for she would not resume her riding-coat, and her arms were bare. A little later, however, the sun rose high enough to reach her. In the great oak that overhung the spring, the birds began to flit like moving shadows; a squirrel ran down the bark and looked at her. And in her veins a strange exhilaration began to stir. She was alive! She was safe! And then, on a sudden, she heard a footstep close at hand.
She cowered low, seized with terror. It might be Hawkesworth! The villain might have repented of his fears, have gathered courage with the light, have returned more ruthless than he had gone. Fortunately, the panic which the thought bred in her was short-lived. An asthmatic cough, followed by the noise of heavy breathing, put an end to her suspense. Next moment an elderly man wearing a rusty gown and a shabby hat decked with a rosette, came in sight. He leant on a stout stick, and carried a cloak on his arm. He had white hair and a benevolent aspect, with features that seemed formed by nature for mirth, and compelled by circumstance to soberer uses.
Aware of the oddity of her appearance--bare-armed and in her stocking feet--Sophia hung back, hesitating to address him; he was quite close to her when he lifted his eyes and saw her. The good man's surprise could scarcely have been greater had he come upon the nymph of the spring. He started, dropped his stick and cloak, and stared, his jaw fallen; it even seemed to her that a little of the colour left his face.
At last, "My child," he cried, "what are you doing here, of all places? D'you come from the house above?"